Fronteras compasivas and the ethics of unconditional hospitality

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 53-74

  Doty, Roxanne Lynn ^a  

^a ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33847033323     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298060350010701     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. Jacques Derrida, quoted in Anne Dufourmantelle, 'Invitation', in Of Hospitality (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 2.
2. The Devil's Highway is 4,100 square miles of desolate desert where temperatures can reach as high was 54 °C (130 °F) in the shade. It has earned the reputation as one of the deadliest immigrant trails in North America. See Roxanne Doty, 'Crossroads of Death', in (eds) Living, Dying, Surviving: The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror, ed. Elizabeth Dauphinee and Christina Masters (Palgrave-Macmillan, forthcoming 2006).
3. The Highway contains tinajas, natural wells, with life-saving water that few migrants know about. See John Annerino, Dead in Their Tracks (New York and London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999), p.23. Human Borders' pole stations signal the location of these natural wells.
4. Conversation with Tim Holt, 6/12/05. Also see Humane Borders Newsletter, Desert Fountain, February/March 2005. ESRI, a Global Information System software company, donated a GIS that enables Humane Borders to plot each migrant death and all of their water station locations with colour-coded dots that indicate the cause of death. This programme allows them to click on any dot and retrieve the available information on the person who died in the desert, including the date of death, their name, age, county of origin, and age.
5. Personal conversation, 11 June 2005.
6. Personal conversation, 11 June 2005..
7. Robin Hoover, 'Oded's Indictment', paper delivered at the International Conference on Migration and Theology, Notre Dame University, South Bend Indiana, 9/18/04.
8. Derrida's quote is in David Campbell, 'The Deterritorialization of Responsibility: Levinas, Derrida, and Ethics after the End of Philosophy, in Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, eds David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 47.
9. Quote can also be found in 'Dialogues with Derrida' in Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers, Richard Kearny (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 119.
10. Paul Patton, 'A Discussion with Jacques Derrida', Theory and Event 5, No.1, 2001, 14.
11. Derrida, 1997, Le Détroit à la philosophie du point de vue cosmopolitique.
12. Quoted in Couze Venn, 'Altered States: Post-Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism and Transmodern Socialities', in Theory, Culture and Society 19, No. 1-2, 2002, 65-80.
13. Couze Venn uses this term in 'Altered States', 65-80.
14. For example, see Neta C. Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics-Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
15. Margaret E.Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998).
16. To cite just a few sources from the ever-increasing literature that addresses ethics in international relations from a critical/post-modern sensibility, see Campbell and Shapiro (eds), Moral Spaces;
17. Michael J. Shapiro, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997);
18. the relatively new Journal of Human Rights;
19. David Campbell and Michael Dillon, 'The End of Philosophy and the End of International Relations', in The Political Subject of Violence, ed. Campbell and Dillon (Manchester: Manchester University Presss, 1993);
20. Michael Dillon, 'Sovereignty and Governmentality: From the Problematics of the New World Order to the Ethical Problematic of World Order' Alternatives 20, 1995;
21. and William E. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
22. Simon Critchley and Richard Kearney, preface, pp. viii and x in Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (New York and London: Routledge, 2001).
23. Isaiah 49:10, quoted on Humane Borders flier.
24. Mitch Tobin, 'Monument Presents a Management Morass', High Country News 14 April 2003. For enhanced border enforcement policies,
25. see Joseph Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the 'Illegal Alien' and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (New York and London: Routledge, 2002);
26. Peter Andreas, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000).
27. Desert Fountain, June-July 2005, Humane Borders Newsletter.
28. Cutting sign is an ancient art, once used by Native Americans to track game and Euro-Americans. It is used by Border Patrol agents to track the paths of migrants.
29. See Worldclimate.Com
30. Just one illustrative example of the difficulty Humane Borders often encounters is the 10 million dollar general liability insurance the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) planned to charge them for the eight water stations on BLM land. Eventually they got it reduced to 2 million dollars. If they had not been successful in this, the water stations would have had to be taken down. See Desert Fountain, August 2005.
31. I use the concept bare life consistent with Agamben's use of this term. See Giorgia Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
32. On how this concept illuminates current US border enforcement policy, see Doty, 'Crossroads of Death'.
33. See Jenny Edkins, 'Ethics and Practices of Engagement: Intellectuals as Experts,' in International Relations 19, No. 1, 2005, 64-9
34. and David Campbell, 'Beyond Choice: The Onto-politics of Critique,' in International Relations 19, No. 1, 2005, 127-34
35. On writing and the identity of scholars as writers and subjects, see Doty, 'Crossroads of Death' and 'Maladies of Our Souls: Identity and Voice in the Writing of Academic International Relations', Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17, No. 2, July 2004, 377-92.
36. Derrida uses the phrase, 'undecidable, quasi-concepts' in Aporias, translated by Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 15.
37. Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, 17.
38. Jacques Derrida, 'Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundations of Authority"' Cardozo Law Review 11, 919-1045.
39. Also published in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld and David Gray Carlson (New York: Routledge, 1992). My citations are from the latter.
40. Derrida, 'Force of Law', 16.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Jacques Derrida, Aporias, transl. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 19.
44. Ibid.
45. Jacques Derrida, 'Force of Law', p.16
46. and quoted in discussion with Derrida, p.2.
47. Anne Dufourmantelle, 'Invitation', in Of Hospitality, 2.
48. Derrida, Aporias, 16.
49. Derrida, Aporias, 20 uses the terms 'uncrossable', 'too porous', 'permeable', and 'indeterminate' to describe borders.
50. Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000);
51. 'Hostipitality', Angelaki-Journal of Theoretical Humanities 5, No. 3, December 2000.
52. This article was originally published as 'Hostipitalite', in Cogito 85, 1999, special issue of Pera Peras Poros, ed. Ferda Kesking and Onay Sozar, 17-44.
53. 'Hostipitality', 3.
54. Ibid., 6.
55. In On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), Derrida discusses how Kant, in his famous 'Definite Article in View of Perpetual Peace', at first seems to 'extend cosmopolitan law to encompass universal hospitality without limit'. However, he notes that Kant takes care to exclude from his conception of 'surface of the earth' wherein all creatures have common possession, that which is 'erected, constructed, or what sets itself up above the soil'. This delimitation includes nation and state. See 20-1. On the constraints to Kant's thinking on cosmopolitanism posed by his commitment to state sovereignty,
56. see Michael J. Shapiro, 'The Events of Discourse and the Ethics of Global Hospitality, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27, No.3, 1998, 695-713;
57. David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro, 'Introduction: From Ethical Theory to the Ethical Relation', Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics,
58. and Siba N. Grovogui, 'The New Cosmopolitanisms: Subtexts, Pretexts and Context of Ethics', in International Relations 19, No. 1, 2005, 103-13.
59. Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, 77.
60. Derrida, 'A Discussion with Derrida', Theory and Event 5, No. 1, 2001, 14-15.
61. It should be noted here that Humane Borders is in fact involved in struggles surrounding these larger immigration and social issues, but that is a story for another time.
62. Derrida, 'Foreigner Question', in Of Hospitality, 55.
63. Aporias, 14.
64. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, translated by Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994), 26.
65. Ibid., 27.
66. Venn, 'Altered States', 76, refers to gifts that are outside an economy of exchange that thus can act as modalities in relating to the other.
67. Conversation/interview, 6/11/05.
68. See Campbell, 'Deterritorialization of Responsibility' in Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, 33.
69. Emmanuel Levinas, Outside the Subject (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 124,
70. quoted in E. Jeffrey Popke, 'The Face of the Other: Zapatismo, Responsibility, and the Ethics of Deconstruction', Social and Cultural Geography 5, No. 2, 301-17, At 305.
71. I do not wish to engage here in a discussion/debate on the limitations of Levinas due to his stance on the third party and the state. Campbell points out that in places Levinas' proximity does, in fact, take on a spatial dimension which ushers in the need for a justice associated with and sanctioned by the state. See Campbell, 'Deterritorialization of Responsibility' in Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics, 36-40. My point here is to draw upon the notion of proximity that is not limited to a spatial understanding associated with the nation-state regardless of whether Levinas' is so constrained. The concept of unconditional hospitality clearly is not limited by spatial considerations.
72. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 104.
73. Specters of Marx, 25 and 27.
74. Specters of Marx, 28.
75. Simon Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrid and Levinas (Oxford, UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1992), 236-8.
76. Simon Critchley, Ethics of Deconstruction, 108, quoting Derrida.
77. Personal conversation.
78. Derrida, 'Force of Law', 26.
79. See 'Force of Law', 26
80. and 'Hostipitality', 8.
81. 'Force of Law', 28.
82. Ibid., 28.
83. 'Force of Law', 28.
84. Desert Fountain June-July 2005.
85. Specters of Marx, 86 and 90.
86. Specters of Marx, 90.
87. 'Hostipitality', 13.
88. Specters of Marx, 91.
89. The names were compiled by the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation's Border Project in 2004. Given that the fiscal year October 2004 to October 2005 broke the previous record of deaths set in 2000, there would be approximately 400 names to add to the list. See http://www.stopgatekeeper.org
90. See Martha C. Nussbaum, Poetic Justice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).
91. Humane Borders Press Release, 1/19/06; Chris Hawley, 'Activists to Provide Migrants Arizona Maps', Arizona Republic, 1/24/06.
92. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, 89.
93. Of course there are many others sites of contestation and tragedy where one might locate other acts of hospitality. There areas of Ceuta and Melilla and Southern Morocco readily come to mind. See Médécins San Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) Press Release, 'In Southern Morocco, more than 500 immigrants have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves after being expelled from Ceuta and Melilla', 10 July 2005; Press Release, 'MSF demands humane treatement for sub-Saharan immigrants in Morocco', 10 December 2005. There are also other humanitarian groups that roam the deserts of the Southwestern US, such as 'No More Deaths'. I explore some of these groups in a work currently in progress.
94. Jacques Derrida, 'Hostipitality, 14.
95. Ibid.